Monday, December 6, 2010

Back to Busan

This Saturday Paul and I embarked on a trip down to Busan. My previous Busan experience was great, one day of awesome sun and beach and two of rain, but that just led to screen golf and other rainy beach day activities. Paul's last trip was a total disaster. The first hour he and his friend got there, his friend fell into an abandoned elevator shaft in the middle of an alley. To make matters worse, said friend was being ultra cheap and wouldn't go out to any seafood dinners, or do anything that cost more than $10.

Start trip 2. My friend was going to host her birthday party at the grand opening of the Wolfhound Busan, but ended up bailed the Wednesday before. I had already signed up for a bus trip and a hotel, so Paul and I figured we'd still go. The bus left 10am on Saturday, and there was only one other person I recognized on the bus, and I didn't know him well. It was the normal large group of 20 somethings. There's the bitchy girls, the dude who passes out early, the dude who hasn't slept in 3 days, the bros, the girls who don't drink, and then the rest of us who fall somewhere in the middle. The 7 hour bus trip was a total shit show. Started out calm, but come 5pm at Busan, things were saucy. I think most people went straight to the wolf, but Paul and I wanted to change and go out to a nice dinner. Our hotel room was amazing!! Definitely the nicest I've stayed in since I've been here (which really isn't saying much), but it was clean and had a sweet jacuzzi, and our trip dominated the entire floor of the hotel, so there was no room for noise complaints as we were the ones making all of the noise. Paul and I found a nice little seafood restaurant which was right next door to the WOlf. We ordered sashimi (who knows what kind). First came the sides; it had the normal ones like salad, kimchi and seaweed, but the we got bondagee. Theyre little silkworm babies. I personally really like them, but it seems I'm the only one. When my parents came my dad tried it, and I got my friend Rohan to as well, but usually people just look at me with a disgust in their eyes and say "hell no." Paul was a good sport and tried it though. Perhaps it was the previous 7 hours of drinking on the bus that persuaded him, but he still didn't like it, or woudn't admit to it at least. Then the brought out live octopus. I guess it's not really alive, but its raw and wiggles on the plate and in your mouth. We'd both had it before, but thoroughly enjoyed picking the pieces up with one finger and watching it hang off before munching it. The sashimi was awesome as well.

We finished and head to the Hound. What a mess. Everyone from the bus was 4x more wasted than the last time we saw them. It was a riot. Day 2 and Paul and I head out of our room, with pounding heads, and made our way to the little fish alley. We stopped and had spicy freshwater eel which was awesome, then went back to the Wolf where we were given free drink tickets. A decent bloody mary in Korea is hard to come by, so it was a welcome post breakfast beverage. The guy who organized the trip, Marty, was a waste case the night before, only to be outdone by his wastedness the morning after!! It worked for me though because he was passing free drink tickets out left and right. Sadly, the afternoon flew by, and come 5pm we had to make the long journey back. After a couple fights were broken up on the bus on the way out, everyone sort of chilled out ad enjoyed (passed out) the ride.

I <3 Busan and cant wait to go back with warm weather!! Did I mention it was in the mid 60s!!!??